Transformers sets hi-def format sales record

But 300 still ahead on first-week sales

More than 100,000 copies of Transformers on HD DVD were sold on the title's first day of release, the movie's distributor, Paramount Home Entertainment, revealed last night. It went on to sell 90,000 more copies during its first week.

Those numbers were more than enough to lift the disc to the top of the US high-def chart, mirroring what occurred with the last big HD release, 300, which was made available on both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Transformers is an HD DVD exclusive.

Transformers: robots undisguised, yesterday

Warner released 300 on the last day of July. During the title's first seven days on sale, more than 250,000 units crossed the counter, the distributor claimed at the time. So Transformers may not be quite the record-breaker Paramount reckons.

But it wins on a single-format basis: of the 250,000 copies of 300 sold, around 83,333 were HD DVDs and 166,666 were BDs - the latter well short of Transformers' 190,000.

Still, all of this is small fry. The Transformers DVD sold 4.5m copies on its first day: almost 24 times as many as the number of HD DVDs sold.

Paramount also claimed more than 20 per cent of purchasers used their Transformers HD DVD to connect to online content.